When a woman loves man’s best friend
It was all fun and games owning a dog when I was in my 20s. But things got more complicated in the past year. Now when I enthusiastically talk about my 10-year-old pup who’s more Ewok than canine, I am met with the following question: “Do you have children?” Ouch.
Not long ago, I wasn’t yet expected to be a mother. Now, I am. And apparently my canine attachment has derailed the natural path to motherhood.
After all, when a woman in her 30s waxes poetic about her dog ’s love of string beans, it’s probably time for her to devote attention to having actual offspring. When I offer a simple “No” as my answer to the child question (which is lobbed at me by women, never men), I’m met with a sly smile that has increasingly made me self-conscious about the role Nigel plays in my life.
But no one has ever asked my husband whether he has any children when regaling folks with tales of Nigel’s preference for organic poultry. As a society, we have constructed dogs as man’s best friend. But for us women? They’re our poor substitute for actual children. So if we fawn over a dog it means we best procreate. Stat.
It’s not that I don’t want kids. It’s just that I don’t always feel like talking about having kids — especially when I’m talking to a near perfect stranger. And why can’t a woman of a certain age talk about her dog without having to assure people that, “Oh yes, I plan on having kids soon so I’m not inappropriately mothering my canine.”
Of course it’s not only strangers who are on my case. When I told my mother I was thinking about getting a second dog, she was none too pleased. “Have a baby first,” she said.
And when I told my brother — jokingly — that Nigel and his son are “cousins,” I was first met with silence.
“You have no idea what it’s like to have a child,” he said, peeved. But of course I know that a dog is not a child. That’s why, at this point, I have a dog and not a child.
I also know how social norms work. I teach college students about the ways in which cultural expectations steer us to act a certain way. So I’m not surprised that some people think that I — at 32 — need to talk less about my dog. At least until I have a kid and fulfill the cultural script expected of me.
But I long for simpler days when I could share tales of a canine rumpus without scorn.